


Blue Light

by januarywren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Childhood Friends, Crack Treated Seriously, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Hermione Granger/Severus Snape, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Good Severus Snape, Hermione Granger is a Good Friend, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Fanart, Light Angst, Light-Hearted, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, Marauders, Marauders Bashing (Harry Potter), Marauders Era (Harry Potter), No Smut, POV Severus Snape, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Pureblood Society (Harry Potter), Requited Love, Romance, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Slytherin Hermione Granger, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Young Severus Snape, Yule Ball (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/januarywren/pseuds/januarywren
Summary: “Miss Granger.”Her name was spun sugar on his lips, a treat he couldn’t withhold from himself.She’d waited for him -“You’re late,” she replied, a note of anxiety in her tone.She hid her blush from him until his fingers wrapped around hers. Her hand was slight and trembling in his, and he held himself still.He heard her breath catch, as she glanced toward him. "Forgive me," Severus murmured, swallowing tautly, "Please, Hermione."Fluffy Same-Age AU | Severus has a secret to reveal...
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Severus Snape, Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 16
Kudos: 124
Collections: Best of SSHG





	Blue Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxyx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyx/gifts), [Kidansong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kidansong/gifts), [Subtlesarcasm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subtlesarcasm/gifts).



> [Inspired by foxyx's amazing fanart!](https://foxyx.tumblr.com/image/643823149288488960/)
> 
> Thank you @foxyx for allowing me to write this! I've been struggling to write anything Harry Potter lately, but when I saw S & H on my feed, inspiration instantly struck! 
> 
> (PS: Yes! I'm alive! I've been terribly busy with zine work and finishing my last year of university - things are slowing down now, and I hope to update more of my fanfic! I've missed sharing my work with everyone. 😫💖)

“Miss Granger.”

Her name was spun sugar on his lips, a treat he couldn’t withhold from himself.

She’d waited for him -

“You’re late,” she replied, a note of anxiety in her tone.

She hid her blush from him until his fingers wrapped around hers. Her hand was slight and trembling in his, and he held himself still. 

He heard her breath catch, as she glanced toward him. "Forgive me," Severus murmured, swallowing tautly, "Please, Hermione."

There were things he wanted to say, thoughts that he wanted to express; yet found himself feeling as he had every time the lion cubs had taunted and teased him. Anxiety tangled around his ribcage, squeezing tight as he heard sounds of laughter and gaiety from the ballroom.

He knew that he didn’t belong there.

He never had since his invitation to Hogwarts came. His mother had dreamt of him embracing his heritage, while Tobias had drowned himself in drink, and expressed himself through his sneers and cold gazes. It was nothing that his peers could imagine, nor had they wished to.

Even Lily hadn’t understood his hesitation, as she, and others like her threw themselves into frivolous things. Severus often felt his father’s gaze upon him still, something that he was loath to admit, even to himself.

Yet it was Tobias he saw in the mirror as he dressed, with his fingers trembling, and his insides churning. He never expected for Hermione to ask him to attend the Yule Ball, nor wait for him to appear. She deserved the world.

He deserved something else –

Something less trustworthy and sweet.

He was someone meant for shadowy corners and abandoned aisles in the library, where no one would care to look. Severus knew that wasn’t entirely true, as he felt Hermione there, beside him. 

There was a part of him that reveled in the warmth of her and as she pressed her palm against his. She made him feel less a wizard and more a man than anyone else ever had. She gave every part of herself to him, as if he deserved it.

Her easy smiles and the tilt of her head, as she read a line that intrigued her -

The light that shone from within her as she guided lost students through the halls of their school, helping them memorize easy paths to their classes - 

The warmth that emanated from her heart and her soul -

“I do,” Hermione laughed, her eyes meeting his. “I always will, you know, even if you’ve waited until the last dance to appear- “ 

And it was true. Severus remembered the first time he’d met her. She’d been the newest member of Slytherin, said to hide in the library with only her raggedy kneazle for company. No one had ever said that she was lovely, or bold, as Severus had discovered when she sent a flock of birds at Sirius and James when they stalked him through the aisles.

He'd learned that day and every day after, just how different Hermione was from any other at Hogwarts. Only she was willing to partner with him during classes, squabbling with him over facts and figures, without ever fleeing from the sight of his famed scowl.

Nor did she shy away from his company outside of the classroom, as they read during Quidditch matches, and took to visiting the Great Squid at night while taking along bits of their dinner to feed it. (In return, the Great Squid kept the Marauders from finding Hermione and himself as they studied along the lakeside.)

He felt safe and sure by Hermione’s side, as much as he wanted to ridicule the notion. Had his mother felt the same when she first met Tobias? Had his mother believed the lies that Tobias told her - enough to forgo using magic, and burrow her gifts away? There were times when he began letters home, asking those very questions, even as he knew that he would never send them.

He couldn’t.

The memory of his mother donning bruises as another would their cloak made him feel as helpless as Hermione, when she saw how their peers treated Hagrid. Only, Hermione and he had taken to the half-giant, and shared more than one private lesson in his hut, with a number of chattering creatures surrounding them. He’d gotten used to Hagrid’s roaring laughter, and the way that Hermione looked with foam dotted above her lip, as she drank butterbeer –

Severus enjoyed himself more than he thought possible during those nights and every night that he spent in Hermione’s company. She could make anything better, as if it were a gift of hers, from Merlin himself.

Perhaps it was.

Only there was nothing that Hermione could do about his mother, nor his father, if he ever willed himself to tell her. It was a foolish thought, and if he expressed it in words, he would be more of a fool than Remus was.

(Still, he longed to -)

Severus knew that everything had changed, when it struck him that he had begun to think of Hermione as his friend, regardless of whether she was a housemate or a Gryffindor instead. He knew in their fifth year, that even if Hermione were a muggle without a lick of magic within her, he would have wanted to be with her as her friend.

Perhaps as her lover, too.

Her everything and nothing, for Severus knew that she deserved the title of the “brightest witch of their age”. She was as different from Lily as chalk and cheese, yet he had never thought of her as just a replacement for his former friend.

Hermione was everything he never thought he could (let alone would) have, not as a gangly boy from Cokesworth, whose childhood robes carried the smell of mothballs, and who was never seen as belonging in the wizarding world. He wasn't like the others, yet neither was Hermione, and she deserved a place at Hogwarts more than any of the sacred twenty-eight. 

“Severus?” Hermione murmured, her brow furrowing. “Are you alright?”

He realized, then, that he hadn’t let go of her hand.

“I – “Severus hesitated.

She didn’t know.

He’d wished and he’d wanted her to recognize how he felt – how his hands trembled when he was near her, and his gaze found hers, and hers alone – how she’d pulled him apart, thread by thread, until there was nothing left of him that he hadn’t shared with her –

Only that was a lie, wasn’t it?

For he’d held one thread that she hadn’t unraveled yet, never saying the words that stubbornly clung to the tip of his tongue, regardless of how he tried to swallow them whole. He’d never told her; he was too terrified to, too ashamed to, for he knew the blood that ran through his veins. 

Only... when she looked at him with her pretty, bright eyes, he knew that he was wrong. He was always wrong when it mattered, something that he desperately wanted to change with Hermione.

He wanted to give her his heart, and his soul, and every thought that he’d held from her.

He leaped forward, the words finally spilling free.

“I love you,” Severus said.

And she smiled like the sun, then, for she loved him as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Connect with me: https://januarywren.carrd.co/ 🌹
> 
> https://januarywren.tumblr.com/ 🌹
> 
> and ask for me my discord! 🌹
> 
> Beta'd by kidansong and subtlesarcasm! You're both so kind and sweet, thank you for your help! 🦝🖤


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